Companion Nerve, does it even exist?

[UnvalidUserName]

This is a topic that has being discussed already in other post like here or here, and yet, there were no conclusive responses in either, if at all.

The thing is, other than in loading screens I have not found any evidence or code on Companion Nerve being a mechanic implemented in the game at all or any way to alter it. It's not in the Game Settings, not an Ability assigned to companions, didn't find evidence of it on the Companion Suit or Scripts either. My theory is that it's an unimplemented mechanic that's completely placebo. However, the problem is that it could also be hard-coded into the game in such a way that it's completely unreferenced elsewhere in the GECK.

Has anyone here found any traces of this mechanic over the years?

 

[Radioactivelad]

Uh, whoops, I meant to post this reply here, but accidentally did it in one of the threads you linked.... oops.

Anyway:

 

 

This is something I've tried to investigate with others before, but this was apparently on the the Wiki the entire time:

 

Viewing the engine level code of Fallout: New Vegas, Nerve has been completely disabled at some point in a prior patch. The remnants of the Nerve mechanic can still be found, such as 0x9B5B82, 0x9B5CCD, 0x9B55E9, 0x645006, and several others, but have been called out. It is likely that Companion Suite is the replacement for the Nerve mechanic.

 

Unless I'm misunderstanding, Apparently it was an engine side thing, which would explain why no traces of it can be found in the geck.

 

However, even the Companion Suite is not doing everything it's supposed to do as described in its description, nor is it influenced by Charisma in any way.

On top of that, I don't know if it's a problem with my game, but it's not even being added to my companions for some reason, even with all of my plugins disabled. I've checked the scripts and they *should* be added, but they're not. (You can check in your game with Hasperk 15c571)

 

The good news is Nerve should be pretty easy to handle through the Companion Suite. It just needs to be filled out with the correct conditions and tiers of benefits (and detriments), but vanilla companions not getting the Suite added to them in the first place is kind of a problem.

 

Edit: I just tried adding the perk to my companion with the console, and it just straight up instantly removed itself. After adding the perk, their stats were the same and Hasperk returned 0 What the hell.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Radioactivelad

[UnvalidUserName]

Thanks, that clears some doubts for me. I guess it would be pretty easy to mod in a Companion Nerve imitation someday.

And about Companion Suite, it's actually added to the player. The player is the only entity that can have perks in the game. The thing is, the player actually has 2 perk list of sorts, one that only affects the player, another that is hidden and only affect the companions. That's why AddPerk has a argument to set were you want to add the perk to.

[Radioactivelad]

Is that so?

Obsidian must not have gotten the memo. The hire dialogues for all the vanilla followers have the companion suite given to the companion themselves.

[UnvalidUserName]

It wouldn't surprise me, It's a really confusing gimmick

[madmongo]

Is that so?

Obsidian must not have gotten the memo. The hire dialogues for all the vanilla followers have the companion suite given to the companion themselves.

Bethesda's documentation for addperk says that it works on any actor, which is wrong. You can't add a perk to an NPC (well, technically you can, but it doesn't do anything). The documentation also does not even mention the argument to addperk which causes the perk to be applied to all NPCs that are currently companions to the player. Basically, you just add a 1 to the end of the script command, e.g. player.addperk perk_id 1 instead of just player.addperk perk_id.

 

So yeah, it's not surprising that Obsidian didn't get the memo. A lot of modders also haven't gotten the memo since the documentation for the function is wrong.

[dubiousintent]

Thanks everyone. For future reference, I have added this info to "TIP Perks for Companions" under the "Custom NPCs" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

-Dubious-

[Radioactivelad]

Actually... i have some news.

 

So I just released a Reimplentation of the Nerve mechanic by using a perk.

 

I used Blind to see how much damage an NPC deals in combat in order to test the damage modifiers were working.

 

However, I just now happened to check companion damage without my mod active, and it turns out Charisma *does indeed* modify how much damage they do in the vanilla game (1 Charisma seems to be base damage, and every point after that is a bonus). So Nerve *does* work. At least for giving a damage bonus. Supposedly it's also supposed to increase DT by a percentage, but that doesn't seem to be functional.

 

My mod has some different and additional mechanics, so It's still a mod worth existing, but I don't know why I never thought of checking for Nerve's effects this way before. I don't even think my damage modifiers were ever working to begin with.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Radioactivelad

[UnvalidUserName]

And so, things get even more confusing lol.

Thanks for the follow up!

[dubiousintent]

Updated the wiki "Tip".

 

-Dubious-